Male Atheists and White Knight Sexism
August 22, 2013
By Libby Anne
One strategy frequently used by male atheists attempting to deconvert religious women is to point to the ways religion oppresses women. This is fine, if it is accompanied with an understanding that not all religion oppresses women, an awareness that atheism does not eliminate sexism, and a wider commitment to challenging the oppression of women in every forum where it surfaces. But all too often, it’s not accompanied by these things. In fact, there are all too many times when pointing out the religious oppression of women is more a tactic designed to score points against an enemy than an actual attempt to listen to and improve the well-being of actual women.
One example of this phenomenon is Richard Dawkins himself, who continually and monolithically denounces how Islam positions women while responding with belligerence and obfuscation when his own sexism is pointed out to him (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). But my goal here is not to focus on Dawkins. I mention him only as an illustration of how deep this problem goes. In this post I want to illustrate my concerns by drawing from the words of a recent short-lived commenter. While the solid majority of male atheists will (almost certainly) never come anywhere near being as egregious or obvious as this individual, I want to use this example to illustrate and challenge a pattern that is more widespread than it should be.
The day before yesterday, Jack Kolinski dove into my comment section and spent several hours interacting with commenters there. The entire episode took place on one of the reviews of Michael Pearl’s book. In that post, guest blogger Aletha, a Mormon deconvert, outlined the problems with Michael Pearl’s prescriptions for marital relationships, prescription he, as a fundamentalist pastor, drew from various biblical passages. It is Jack’s time in the comment section on this post that I want to draw from. Here is Jack’s initial comment:
There are a couple of problems with this comment. First, it assumes that Michael Pearl’s interpretation of the Bible is the correct one and ignores the multiplicity of Biblical interpretations, especially, the interpretations promoted by Christian feminists. Second, it assumes that women are Christians because they have simply never “read & understood” what the Bible says, a manifestly false claim and a claim that is more than a little demeaning. Third, it generalizes to all religion, even though not all religion is sexist or oppressive toward women.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/08/male-atheists-and-white-knight-sexism.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I remind you of Ephesians 5:33, which of course comes to mind. It is an example of the difficulties a fair-minded investigator of the Christian religion must address.
Check many translations. You will find that this phrase, which means 'women should fear their husbands,' is translated as 'women should respect their husbands,' even tho the same word (phobetai) occurs 89 other times in the NT and is always otherwise translated 'fear.' The same root is used to name one of the satellites of Mars, Phobos, of the pair Phobos and Deimos fame. 
Note politeness of post. Treats reader as adult.
